Australian documentary filmmaker David Bradbury was detained at the Chennai airport along with his children earlier this month. The acclaimed director, who has been nominated for an Oscar in the past, was reportedly stopped upon arrival in Chennai and then detained for a day before being deported back to Australia.

David Bradbury's detention and deportation

The 73-year-old award-winning filmmaker had arrived in India on September 10 with his two children – Nakeita (21) and Omar (14). The filmmaker said in an interview with The Wire that he wanted to show his kids how “Hindus deal with death” and take them to Varanasi. The filmmaker’s wife Treena, herself a documentary filmmaker, succumbed to cancer five months ago. However, Bradbury said that upon arrival, he was detained at the airport and kept for 24 hours in “pretty disgusting room with papers and rubbish on the floor under a bed with a filthy mattress and no sheets”.

“I was allowed to go to the toilet up the corridor, but there was one time when, despite my calling out, they didn't come back to let me out. So, I was obliged to relieve my bladder into a paper cup I found on the floor,” he told The News Minute. Bradbury also claimed that he was not given access to a toilet all this while, until he was finally deported to Australia. Bradbury said that his two children were made to travel separately. The filmmaker claims he was also not allowed to contact the Australian High Commission.

Why was David Bradbury deported

While there has been no official word on why the filmmaker was detained and deported, Bradbury believes his ordeal is linked to a 2012 film he made on the Kudankulam nuclear plant. While on a visit to India as a judge of the Mumbai film festival, Bradbury had visited Idinthakarai, a coastal village in the Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu, which was an epicentre of the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.

The protests were about the alleged harmful impact of the plant on the environment and the local communities. He documented the protests and the causes behind it, including the death of a protester in police firing. Bradbury had even been arrested in India in October 2012 while he was making that documentary.

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